Bhagavad Gita 3.1
अर्जुन उवाच । ज्यायसी चेत्कर्मणस्ते मता बुद्धिर्जनार्दन । तत्किं कर्मणि घोरे मां नियोजयसि केशव ॥
arjuna uvāca | jyāyasī cet karmaṇas te matā buddhir janārdana | tat kiṃ karmaṇi ghore māṃ niyojayasi keśava ||
Translation
Arjuna said: If, O Janardana, knowledge is held by you superior to action, why then do you, O Keshava, urge me to this terrible action?
Reflection
What instruction have you been treating as the problem instead of the answer?
Read this verse in its chapter: Chapter Three
The student opens Chapter Three with a complaint. He heard the last chapter and pulled the wrong conclusion. If knowledge is better than action, why are you pushing me toward action, and the action you are pushing is ghora, terrible. Janārdana, Keśava. He uses two formal names like a complaint addressed up the chain. Shankara reads the verse as the student's first honest attempt to summarize what he heard, and the misreading that makes the next forty verses necessary. Krishna will not call him confused. He will spend the chapter showing that action and knowledge are not two paths to pick between. They are two faces of the same work, and the only question is which face you have been hiding behind.